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We can't wait in the (forlorn) hope of a Socialist government, so I would like all the workers in the NHS and other public services to TAKE THEM OVER; beginning with an all-out strike and then seizing control.

I wrote to my MP asking for a meeting on zoom, which he has agreed to, but he doesn't want anyone else on the call and has asked that the others contact him individually for meetings. How would you advise that I respond?

I agree completely state ownership is best. But it is lack in quality of British managers leadership that always causes national ownership to fail. A clear example of this is our motor industry. The pnly way this is going to work properly and efficiently is for British workers to have either German or Japanese management. It works, think Nissan, Toyota, Rolls Royce, Mini.

I often receive emails from We Own It or other outside agents who must work closely with your organisation and today I received an email inviting me to an event to persuade my MP George Howarth (Labour) for Knowsley in Merseyside to Protect the NHS from trade agreements with other countries such as the USA

Sadly I am caring for a disabled lady and I haven’t been very well myself with mental health problems as I get very depressed and I won’t be able to take part

The NHS is an organisation close to my heart as I have needed treatment a number of times in my life and I have signed petitions and sent emails on this subject at the behest of other web based organisations such as Change.com

https://www.newchartistmovement.org.uk We all need to start resisting this authoritarian Government and now from this lockdown to potentially selling the NHS off to Trump in a any trade deal this Government along with Labour & the Lib Dems need getting rid of https://www.getborisout.com

* Question 1: Pay differentials will be a major barrier to recovery post-pandemic. We have seen how important the lowest paid amongst us have been during this crisis. Clapping them every Thursday is embarrassing whilst pay differentials remain as they are, and I don't see how we can just go back to what was the status quo. Not everyone can be paid as much as the CEO currently, but the CEO can be paid less, and the lowest paid can be paid more. How do we seriously address the plain injustice of pay diffrentials, post-pandemic? Perhaps organisations in public ownership will be far more able to limit damaging differentials than private sector firms?

* Question 2: We've seen what happens when true Socialists get close to power: the media and the establishment close ranks and control communications to the people, unjustly and falsely discrediting Socialist leaders, and Socialist ideas like public ownership. How can we ensure the debate revolves around policy and ideas, and not falsehoods perpetrated by the media and unscrupulous opposition politicians, and ensure that the media presents a balanced picture to the nation?

* Question 3: Historically, globally, there was a balance of power between the nobility, the clergy, and the merchants. Government by the people, in time, became a fourth power. Today, we find the oligarch merchants have risen in power beyond what is healthy for the great mass of the people. Is recovery from this pandemic the great opportunity for us to redress the balance globally, in favour of government by the people, and in favour of people-oriented ideas like public ownership?

The latest 'Panorama' programme from the BBC reveals that this government has lied and lied again about PPE for our health care people. This is quite apart from the tardy response to a threat that was clear as early as January of this year. In addition, they have been attacking the BBC from every quarter since they came to power ten years ago and here we have the BBC allowing the tories to use the service as a propaganda tool to peddle the lies about their response to the pandemic. The BBC should be refusing to carry out their wishes and tell them to clear off and get one of their cronies in the commercial TV sector to screen their lies and disinformation. I just bet they would all say NO. We have the biggest death rate from Covid-19 of any European Country but the clearest contrast is with New Zealand where the government reacted swiftly and deaths from Covid-19 there have been minimal. Even our part privatised NHS is doing a magnificent job despite the odds being stacked against them by a callous and uncaring government. It proves beyond doubt that private enterprise cannot be relied on to keep us safe in times such as these and we need to start rolling back the frontiers that have allowed to greedy to leech off the rest of us.

Privatisation of public services has been proven to waste a huge amount of taxpayer money. It’s the public's taxes and bills that get wasted on shareholder profits, extra admin costs, and higher interest rates on borrowed money.

Here's a breakdown of the amount of money wasted each week across different sectors:

Rail - £1 billion a year or £19 million a week

Buses - £506 million a year or £9.7 million a week

Water - £2.3 billion a year or £44 million a week

Energy - £3.2 billion a year or £61 million a week

NHS - £6.65 billion a year or £128 million a week

For the sources and more info, read our blog here: https://weownit.org.uk/blog/waste-privatisation-we-cant-afford.

We don't believe in bringing back nationalisations of the past- we believe in public ownership fit for the future. You may be interested in reading our proposal for how public services should be run so that they are accountable to the public who use them, and workers who run them: https://weownit.org.uk/when-we-own-it.

The urgent and serious pandemic situation demonstrates clearly the problems with dividing up between public and private services, not least than when the NHS has been so severely depleted of services, staff and beds, especially high dependency ones, the private medicine companies are not available to support the NHS, and they generally avoid getting involved in complex cases, or set urgent need as a priority. They also take away trained staff from the NHS. I could say more too about the need for bus and rail services returning to being public, in the light of the disastrous current services and constantly rising prices and mismanagement.

Since the BBC is our public broadcaster and is publicly funded, it should be in public control. The rest of the mainstream media is owned and controlled by a handful of billionaires.

We are proposing these reforms so that we can feel that we OWN it:

- Right now the government appoints BBC board members. We need an independent board with a citizens panel to give us a voice, make the BBC more diverse in staff and content, cap excessive pay - and have a stronger role for regional journalism.

I'm more than happy, if you feel you 'Own it' to pay for it. It's called freedom of choice. Just don't expect to include the rest of the population, many of whom who no longer see a 'special' role for The BBC.

If I want to watch any live programming on any channel I have to fund the BBC. If I don't pay, even when I choose not to watch the BBC, I am liable to prosecution, how is that fair ?

I don't pay and only stream programming I want to watch. I was brought up watching BBC but now I would never go back.

To me and a growing number, the BBC's funding is an anachronism, it should stand on it's merits or die.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the BBC with us. What we want is for everyone to feel that they OWN the BBC- to feel represented, and that it is the democratic, publicly owned institution that it was set up to be! We believe that the breadth and quality of the programming that a public broadcaster can produce goes far beyond what a profit motivated company can produce. For example, children's programming is incredibly important and shapes the development of millions- we can't let that become click bait, produced in the interest of making money.

We need a proper process to make sure the BBC has fair, sustainable funding, while protecting vulnerable groups. Just like the NHS, the BBC needs to work for everyone no matter where they live or what their background is. The government should stop funding cuts and pay for over 75s, as they used to, along with low income groups.

It is utterly dismaying to see the hard right attempt to destroy the world’s greatest institution, the BBC. Where else can we hear such a unique mix of culture, history, music, news & so on across radio and TV? Certainly not on the likes of Netflix, that’s for sure.

Just this week I discovered a beautiful radio series by John Shuttleworth, one episode featuring the late Chas Hodges. Where on earth would such a perfect show be found if the BBC didn’t exist?

God bless you, BBC. I’ve loved you and listened to you since childhood and may you always exist, strong and proud - the very best of Great Britain. No other country offers anything remotely as good, and no Tory tea party is going to take this diamond away from the people of Britain and the world.

The BBC is one of the world's leading media and news companies. Its respected the world over. Its output promotes all that is best about the UK. The Conservative Government, with its free market beliefs, should value the BBC as a hugely successful marketing company for UK PLC. Instead the Government appears to think that the BBC should become just another commercial broadcaster.

Any change to the BBC's funding should start with a fundamental definition of what the BBC should be. The funding should then be put in place to support this goal. What we seem to have is a bottom up reform of the funding, with no idea of the final goal. The Government's approach is incoherent.

The BBC has passed its sell-by date. It is biased towards the British people and only tell us on the news what it wants us to know, and not what is really happening in our country. I have over 600 channels on my TV which costs me over £100 a month. I never watch the BBC channels, I saw most of their films years ago so why should I be forced to pay for a license. The wages they pay are obscene and they are now advertising for non-white people to take jobs offered, this to me is being racist towards the British people. The sooner the BBC is put out to grass, the better

I hope if railways are taken back into public ownership, we dont re-privatise when they're rebuilt, and giving them to the privatisers on a golden platter to suck dry and wreck again, making mugs of us public!

I hope if railways are taken back into public ownership, we dont re-privatise when they're rebuilt, and giving them to the privatisers on a golden platter to suck dry and wreck again, making mugs of us public!

I have spent the last six years analysing the global financial system and I have written a book about the results; named: The Financial Jigsaw, it is due to be published in Q1 2020. In advance of publication I am offering a free PDF copy of my manuscript upon request to: peter@underco.co.uk.

You may review my updates at https://www.gofundme.com/f/fnahvp-free-book and my book has been serialised at The Burning Platform website over the last 80 weeks, and which is coming to an end soon:

I am convinced that our current neoliberal system is due to spectacularly fail soon and that a New Economy will emerge. Only by re-engineering our failed systems will people yet again regain control of capital and return wealth into the hands of the producers and workers. Our small group here in Somerset, UK is active in promoting our 6 Demands for reform: http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/

I have seen the advance of neo liberalism over the las 30 years (I am 69) it began with Maggie, and really took off under the war criminal (in my opinion) Blair.Remenber liberals are not necessarily libertarians, to steal the NHS bit by bit is what is happening. Water companies owned by foreign interests, huh. We are told we cannot afford these things on the public purse, we bailed out the banks, socialism for the banks, capitalism for the rest of us. Mark Blyth (economist) watch him off YOU Tube, he details the whole corrupt saga, and is very entertaining.

Virgin Care's suing of the government because of the NHS should be responded by a public boycott of Branson businesses.

When the students protested in 2009/10 over tuition fees when they sited if the tax own by large corporations (starbucks,vodaphone etc) was actually collected there would be no need for any fees. The students would have had a great more traction if the students union called to a boycott of Vodaphone until tax was paid, then no starbucks and so on. People have great power, but only in number. That is why our culture has reduced much of the population to individuals with smart phone (tracking,listening,filming spying device). This has been done in part by divide and rule, constant confusion and distraction

A government is a tool that can be used to build services and other businesses with public money. Then when the business/service is successful and a necessity any profitable areas can be extracted and virtually given away to the powerful friends of government. Because of this they should be under a microscope of transparency so the public's interest can be protected from exploitation. Instead we live in a world where power hides behind redaction, avocation or lies, lies and damn lies. Meanwhile they want access to everybody's data because they know it leads to and they desire absolute control. This in turn leads to absolute power and absolute secrecy for the powerful. Handy when the absolute corruption inevitably follows.

Any person in position of power responsible for signing off or engineering the giving away of any public asset, more over the jewel that is the NHS, should be publicly exposed and grilled.

Two months ago I fell down in my drive way in Michigan where I now live and sustained multiple fractures. I was taken to the accident and emergency in an ambulance. I pay blue cross and blue shield my health insurance company a premium of $1000 every month with a deductible of $8000. I had to be admitted for surgery and hospitalization. I was asked by the insurance company why I could not be treated in alternate facility and if I could be cared for at home. I had two surgery and was immobilized on both my legs and hand. I had excruciating pain causing my blood pressure to go up to 200/100. The insurance was insistent that this be managed at home. I had not got pre authorization for surgery or hospitalization. The insurance is refusing to pay for 12 day stay in hospital.

Would this have happened in NHS ? I worked for 23 years as a nurse and miss it very much

Please use my case to inform what usa style of health care is like.

If you like I will post my letter here for all to see what is the true face of American health care.

Please share it with wider audience and I will be more than happy to talk to any one about my experience. Let me know how we can use this information to save our NHS.

Work for the NHS and very proud to do so. Our daughter has received life saving NHS care. Many family members/friends have had NHS treatment /care,and cannot imagine Britain without it. It has to stay.

The NHS belongs to the British public . We have paid for it with our National Insurance contributions and Income Tax .It is not government property to sell off to the highest bidder. The NHS is in trouble because our taxes are not being used to support it . Home aid should take priority over foreign aid .Our .7% GDP foreign aid "gift" of £14.5 billion should never happen.Why should we donate 4 times more GDP than the USA.If we paid .18% like the USA we would have over £11 billion to help get our country back on its feet.

National and local assets being sold off cheaply and this has meant for example the school meals service has been decimated and prices of electricity,gas and phones etc have gone up to benefit the shareholders.As well as this,how many bankruptcies have we seen as regards Carillion and Southern Cross and the decline of employment rights for workers?

It is time for local and national government to take over these services again.

Seems like every public facility that has gone into private hands has now got problems and is costing the public both in terms of money and poorer facilities. The money being taken out of public services to enrich the few is obscene.

I had the privilege of working in the "old system" in which all "home helps" were employed by and managed by Social Services.

Fantastic system, I used to go out and assess people for that and various other services, if I felt they needed it, quick report, took it next door to the home care managers and it was done !.

Any problems, next door again, not that there were many problems.

If there were staff shortages, the home care managers would just "borrow" some from the manager from the neighbouring area, they all worked in the same room !

Only time that ever failed, the home care manager said " right lets go and do it ourselves then" and we did, you never said no to Audrey :)

Then it got in the main privatised, what a mess.The first time I ever used on of the private companies, they sent a pregnant 17 year old girl to do a night watch on an elderly lady whose daughter was exhausted by the process of doing it all herself.

It ended up with her looking after both.

Any problems with private homecare and I had to go to the private homecare liaison person, they then went to the private companies "complaints officer" and so on and on, more than often my concerns just got "lost" in this system.

There are so many more problems and I could go on about Residential Care next, but just one final point, privatisation is inherently flawed in this area.

Contracts were for 4 years, and then put out to tender again.

Any company tendering cannot possibly employ the number of people needed to fulfill that contract, until they know they have it !

Obviously, how can they pay people when they don't know if they get the contract or not.

Each time there is a change it is a total mess, and it takes a very long time to work it out, a couple of years is not unusual.

Of course this is made a lot worse by the competitive nature of this process. A company who may have finally got to some level of competence is hardly likely to "give" all its best workers to another company who have just "pinched" their contract..are they ?

So the silly cycle starts all over again.

It has turned a superb service into an absolute mess, I could go on, but I retired a few years ago, I just couldn't stand it, and that's without even mentioning that my decision making was taken away to some "Funding Panel", who never ever got to see a client of mine.

Oh no, they said no, but I had to tell people that, even though I recommended the services for them

Best not go into the quality of my "replacements" eh :)

Suffice it to say that they could be paid about half of what I was paid, and if they knew no different system, well what could they say ?

Southern Water have been found out and recently heavily fined for years of covering up/lying about not processing water properly etc.. here in Adur and Worthing in Sussex. A big new development called New Monks Farm has been passed for planning on a Flood plain. Southern Water, knowing the problems we have locally with rising water blocking sewage from what is old sewage system (which has needed upgrading even before all this new extra use comes online). Southern Water also passed with no new sewage system in spite of it having to cope with a development of 650 houses, a major IKEA store and new Brighton & Hove Albion FC training and sports facilities for men & women. All of these will be attached to our ancient sewage system with no upgrading. I don't trust Southern Water to have done all the necessary checks given their past record. We need a re-assessment by an independent authority before the work on this enormous development goes ahead. I would trust a water company in Public ownership to have the well-being of the local community in mind when making a decision which will take 8 - 10 years to complete but this private company has form. I just don't trust them. Of course, the background to all this is Climate Change. In the long term, it looks as if rising sea levels will at some point affect this area.

Totally agree a whole range of services and industries should be brought back into the public ownership domain. However, how can we give the concept an identity and protection from predatory finance? Here's how: thesovereigneconomy.home.blog An idea to protect, and an identity for the whole of the pubic owned economy.

The ideology of speculation and short-term profit rather than investment and long term sustainability has taken precedence with many of our politicians for the last 30 years and inevitably the house of cards continues to collapse, the latest example being the predictable fate of the privatised probation services. 'We Own It' has been part of that success and we now need to take the initiative further while the present government is in chaos. Many of us will have seen our banks and post offices closed, my town has lost it's one bank and our local shop has a post office where the staff serve at both and do their best but have very limited training in Post Office work (I speak as an ex Crown Office Postal Officer who spent weeks on a training course and under supervision before qualifying in the 1970s). I would now like to see more co-ordination between organizations supporting public services and specifically into investing in research into combining Post Office services with Banking including any other services which might make this more economically sustainable.

There must be many organizations and pressure groups which would like to see public services restored rather than privatized for the short-term benefit of itinerant executives and speculators. I commend the pressure group 'Tax Watch' set up last year by Julian Richer of 'Richer Sounds;' Julian has written a number of books on ethical capitalism and has shown that this works in practice. Readers may have noticed that he has been in the news recently for gradually transferring his ownership of the business to his staff. If everyone paid their share of tax then our public services and NHS would not be under the pressures they are - hardly rocket science! 'Tax Watch' is just one example of a pressure group we should link up with.

After being discharged from hospital with an open wound, I needed District Nurses for six weeks and I. That time had different nurses nearly every day, who had little knowledge of my condition and if this had improved or not. When I enquired why there were so many I was told that because the service was private and covered a large area then it was more cost effective to allocate nurses randomly without any thought for cobtinuity

I want all our services in the public sector. I am very pro public sector. Our NHS was set up free at the point of use. This Tory Government wants to privatise it and slowly but surely they are. We need all public services funded by public money. Privitisation is a wzy of making financial gain for themselves whilst the services deteriorate to unacceptable levels. Public Ownership is an essential part of society and we must fight to keep the ones in public sector and fight to bring back into public ownership. Enough is enough. We will fight and will win.

I support all of your proposals, especially bringing Utility Services back to Public Ownership I.e. re-nationalisation.

One MORE THING - I’m a very active socialist signing numerous petitions. However you (and many others) are guilty of making use of Social Media (such as Facebook) to widen your audience and impact. I’ve never had or wanted a FaceBook Account because of the way

Thank you for your comments. I completely understand that not everyone uses social media and so will not see our campaigns on these platforms. We make a conscious effort to be very active via email and use this as our main medium for communicating with supporters. We understand why people choose not to use social media and want for internet monopolies to be owned by the public, please have a look at our webpage on it: https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/internet-monopolies

It is a key way for us to engage with supporters though and without being active on these mediums we risk losing a massive chunk of supporters who engage with us from different demographics. We hope you understand this.

1. The government’s vision is for the UK to have a world-class railway, working as part of the

wider transport network and delivering new opportunities across the nation...

In 1954 under the leadership of noble and selfless politicians, who lived under the indifference of social deprivation and fought in the horrors of a real war, championed social redress and democracy for all. Their vision for our erstwhile Great Britain, gave us the best railway in the World and British Railways got us to work on time, cheaply in a coherent transport strategy with plentiful opportunities for all its citizens.

A year later, Macmillan, Marple’s and Beaching’s selfish self interests and anti-social ideology, was to replace trains and trams with cars, busses and lorries – the horrors of which blight our roads and cities with death and incoherency in most aspects of society’s needs, with opportunities and rewards for the privileged few.

Had our political voting system enabled true democracy, BR would still be the World leader and our country would still be manufacturing and exporting trains, railways, cars, busses trams ships planes, etc. across the world.

But without democracy and the public having a voice in proportion to our needs, Keith Williams report will be superfluous to what our corrupt, undemocratically elected politicians dictate.

Far more onerous for the general public, is that under the dictate of the UN, said politicians will adopt their policies of World Governance for the benefit of the few, at the expense and elimination of the many.

I remember pre79 when nothing was privatised and you never heard of redundancy. It felt things were rock solid and enough staff to keep things going smoothly.

Now private companies have cut staff and put profit before people and that is the big change. Also it has not made it competitive (energy for example) but what does make me really angry is the CEO 's salaries and perks. I really believe that is where the increases go when we have to pay an increase.(energy)

I think that their packages are obscene. Also the money goes to the shareholders.

No sooner had the ink dried than more no funny jokes ushered forth c/o Robert Nisbet regional director for the Rail Delivery Group.

Nisbet’s previous jokes - as a fifth of Northern Rail services were delayed or cancelled and commuters tempers nationwide were at breaking point – was that Britain has the most efficient railways in Europe!

Nisbet kept the laughs rolling saying that European nations including France, Spain and Italy could ‘only dream’ of having our kind of performance and punctuality records, because of the public-private partnership.

This morning’s jokes were about rationalising fairs and it talking 3 to 5 years to roll it out, thus pre-ordaining the Governments Rail Review – which is clearly set in stone now i.e. No Public Partnership!

Which is no different to the Governments joke of telling employers to consult with employees to try and stop redundancies, and allowing them to issue their last pay packets after the meeting.

In the case of our Railways (and the rest of our public services and essential utilities), the sad truth is that under proper Public Participation i.e. Co ownership. Management and having a proportional say for the strategic needs of the country. British Railways (BR) could lead the World again.

And others would indeed only dream of having our kind of performance, punctuality and low fares, because of our fine morals and grand ideals.

Absolutely, but before we can even dream about co-owning and running our essential public services and utilities, etc. The Public either follows Natalie Bennetts call; and we demand Proportional Representation to have true democracy. Or, the public takes matters into their own hands; and emulates a Fidel Castro style overthrow of the government – who’s volunteering?

Face reality folks, as apart from Guy Fawkes the last time the people fought back, Thatcher had the police batter their skulls-in and the army on call to help - Churchill used that threat at Tonypandy.

Yes, we needed Churchill to take on a tyrant, and we need that resolve again. As our inept politicians have left us a laughing stock and made us a sitting duck. As witnessed by our Royal Navy sending a dinghy to “shadow” a Russian Aircraft carrier through the English Channel - as they laughed - drinking vodka, undermining our resolve and NATO alliance to help a dictator! it’s a joke, but not a funny joke!

The current debacle of Brexit is another not funny joke of the endemic power our politicians have and their arrogance to perpetuate a political system that is undemocratic, corrupt and inept!

So, we defo need democracy, as their biggest draconian threat is even worse. The Hadley centre, created by Thatcher, was used to replace coal with uranium and strip all power from the unions and miners! But the on-going horrors of Fukushima, the threat of Nuclear annihilation and the rapid demise of our Natural Gas shows what being arrogant, corrupt, inept and stupid really means.

What’s not-on though, is their cruelty to keep undermining our children’s hopes to have a decent job and better life! As as N° 11 turns the recessions on and off, Thatcher and her corrupt followers at N° 10 (Blair et al) morphed Hadley with The University of East Anglia to form the IPCC. And use their corrupt HadCRUT data to threaten the world populations with the consequences of them causing AGW and scaring our children! Surly the repugnant truth of how corrupt our politicians really are!

As truth is, they’ve corrupted this science! As ever since Pangea broke-up to form the current land poles and ocean thermohaline systems, the ice cores prove CO2 is uncorrelated to temperature and lags in and out-off each 100 Ky ice age cycle - triggered by the suns heat variances and orbital cycles. And in-between the short interglacial’s, the Earth’s heat balance is regulated with water vapour to form the greenhouse effect, with 0.004% of CO2 from intrinsic sources! The biggest joke of all!

That’s why the we need democracy: To combat air pollution and have more trains, trams integrated transport, especially in built up areas. And utilise fossil fuels (cleanly and efficiently) to keep all people in affordable electricity and foster more wealth and work for all who are able to work and bolster our Social care for those who are sick, infirmed, or unable to work.

In this respect the agenda our corrupt politicians have is about them keeping power and them deciding who will survive and prosper in their cushy New World Order. History, shows the tenable link to those who turned their back on Christianity and disposed of their fellow men women and children, in circumstances not that dissimilar to what’s being meted out now. This is why we must have the resolve to fight for what our forefathers died for, as they fought tyranny for us To Own It.

It is important not to be dogmatic. 'We' have more ways of 'owning' assets than just public ownership. We have public, private, common and club goods and new technologies enable other (combined) categories. I think ytou should make it plain that your campaign includes particularly, common ownership and cooperative ownership (ie not public) as options. It would then be easier for me and many others to support you in your endeavours, which I would very much like to do.

I am trying to stimulate people on the left to think more carefully about social care. Politicians seem only to be concerned with funding arrangements - i.e. demanding more public money to be put into social care in order to improve NHS efficiency (discharging people from hospital on time). They fail to acknowledge that this is simply putting public money into a private service.

We need to understand that social care is:

• a chaotic privatised service which is unplanned in relation both to likely demand in terms of future numbers, location and needs of clients and appropriate workforce size and skills to meet this demand;

• dependent on the whim of providers – made up of individual small-business operators, a small number of charitable providers, and a range of large operators (with large numbers of beds) often owned by speculative hedge funds which are only interested in profit margins;

• staffed by an under-qualified, largely non-professional, poorly-paid workforce in contrast to the highly-skilled professional NHS workforce with which it is expected to co-operate;

• means-tested – that is, anyone with assets over £23,250 has to pay wholly for their care (the remainder being funded by their local authority against a very rigorous test of their care needs, which too often excludes a large proportion of those, who by most lay definitions, need it);

• based on a funding stream (via the local authority settlement) entirely different from that of the NHS (directly Treasury-funded);

and

• that it is therefore impossible for the NHS and social care to merge coherently – widely recognised in theory as the only workable option – in any way that would bring high quality care to those who need it in a timely, effective and affordable way.

We should therefore be campaigning for a rejection of the current system of social care provision in its entirety which should be replaced, over time, by a National Care Service, the structure and scope of which is in public ownership, funded through general taxation, free at the point of use, and meeting the highest standards of care as determined by the most up-to-date and evidence-based research, with a workforce trained in accordance with these research findings and employed by the National Care Service itself.

i think water, gas, electric, trains, post should all be nationalised as well as police, fire, ambulance.

If they were inefficient, lumbering incompetents then whatever it was that made them so should be removed to allow them to work efficiently for the citizens and not sell the utilities so they make money once for the government and thereafter for shareholders only.....

As for police, fire, ambulance, by what stretch of the imagination are these 'local'??? witness the lack of co-operation between different county forces and inability to communicate because of the use of different systems... madness!